Does Peppermint Oil Keep Mice Out of the Kitchen? I Unfortunately Had a Chance to Test This.

Living in New York you're always going to have some kind of battle with kitchen pests. I live in on the fourth floor of a relatively nice apartment complex in Brooklyn and I still see my fair share of unwanted creatures. Recently I've been seeing more mice than normal. What was once a one or two mice a year has turned into a four-mice-a-month situation. Not good.

Instead of using traps, I wanted to try to stop the mice at the source. I've heard all kinds of sneaky ways of getting rid of mice, including spraying peppermint oil. Have you tried this?

When I told a few of my friends about my mice issues in my apartment, they all recommended I try peppermint oil. A quick search online explains that mice find the smell of peppermint overwhelming and confusing and they stay away from the scent. You are supposed to use 100% peppermint oil and either dab it on cotton balls and place them around your home, or use a spray canister and combine two teaspoons of oil for every one cup of water and spray it around where you see the mice.

Faith had tried using peppermint oil to get rid of mice in the past with no success. I was, however, determined to give anything a shot and so I bought a spray canister and 100% peppermint oil off of Amazon and prepared for battle.

Before using the peppermint spray I wanted to figure out exactly where the mice were coming from. To my horror the superintendent of my apartment building took out the oven from our kitchen and revealed a rather large hole in the wall. So that's where they are coming from! Oh no.

We were able to use foam to patch up the part of the hole that was behind the oven, but it also wrapped around to the sink area which we weren't able to move. I then sprayed the kitchen with the peppermint oil and I haven't seen any sign of mice in about three weeks.

Now I'm assuming this success is a combination of the patching up of the hole and the peppermint spray, but with the war on mice in New York you have to use everything you got. I'm just happy to feel comfortable in my kitchen again.

Have you ever tried using peppermint oil to get rid of mice? What was your experience?